


Stolen Time

by SteadyLittleSoldier



Series: Lams oneshots [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, Christmas, Christmas Dinner, Closeted Character, Family Dinner, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, John's family is a lot, Kissing, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Turtles, childhood crush, engaged John, john paints alex, kissing under the mistletoe, paintings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 02:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11026365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteadyLittleSoldier/pseuds/SteadyLittleSoldier
Summary: Their first big fight took place seven months into their relationship. Alex had just discovered that John had been engaged for a long time, not to his boyfriend, but to a girl back home named Martha.





	Stolen Time

**Author's Note:**

> There are/might be a lot of inaccuracies. But let's just imagine in this au this is all true. I tried to keep it as realistic as possible. Also, I am not hating on anything, everything in this is what the characters think/believe, not the narrator or author.  
> Apologies in advance for any typos or mistakes :)

Their first big fight took place seven months into their relationship. Alex had just discovered that John was engaged, not to his boyfriend, but to a girl back home named Martha. Alex found it hard to take in - the deception, for _seven months,_ the betrayal from the person he loved the most.

Apparently John and Martha had been engaged from when they were very young. John would not call it ‘engaged’ exactly, more like “they always said we would be married when we grew up. Nothing official.”

“What kind of fifteenth century bullshit is this?!” Alex exclaimed to that. But John was from South Carolina, from a family that was conservative and valued tradition. Martha Manning was the daughter of a family friend. A nice petite girl with brown hair and sweet southern drawl, Martha was in awe of the freckly tall boy. She’d had a bit of a crush on John from a very young age, since they could tell boys and girls apart. As a playmate, John loved Martha because she would never argue with him, would agree on playing whatever he wanted to play. But as for love interests, John had his eyes set on other boys; once on a particular boy named Francis, for whom he would go to church every Sunday and stare at the back of his head the whole time, planning what he would say to him when they met outside. Sometimes his father would insist upon sitting on the first bench and John would spend the entire service mentally kicking himself. But he was careful not to voice any of this to anyone. Not even to Alex when he came to New York for college and started dating him, throwing all his worries to the wind. And that is what drove Alex mad, that John would hide something so important from him. Alex stormed out of the dorm room that evening and spend the following week cooped up in the library, sneaking into the room to change clothes when John wasn’t there and basically living off caffeine, until John caught him on a Saturday morning and apologized to him. “I always thought this was not a serious thing. Like you said, who even does that anymore! I mean we were so young! Then I met you and I thought who would want to date a gay guy engaged to a girl. I thought you would leave me if you knew. I didn’t want to lose you over something that doesn’t even mean anything to me. I never was serious about this.”

“But they are serious.”

John looked down at his shoes and nodded.

Alex’s expression softened, he realized what he might have gone through over the last week; this poor rich boy with so much expectations to fulfil and with massive issues and insecurities, who had very few people who would love his true self, who had no one else to go to except for Alex. And he pulled him into an embrace. “You have to tell them.” He felt John tense for a bit before he leaned away.

“Will you please give me time?”

Alex tucked his loose curls behind his ears and kissed the fleshy skin an inch under his eyes.

“Just don’t … don’t leave me, please Alex. I love you. I’m not ready.”

Alex could tell how small, low and undignified he felt. “I am here, J. I love you more than anything.”

 

 

They graduated college in three years and moved into an apartment together. They kept the spare bedroom ready should anyone ever visit them so they could pretend that John slept there. In reality John and Alex would tumble into the queen size bed every night together in a tangled heap, and before sleep overtook their consciousness, they planned their future together in sleepy murmurs - how they would have a baby girl and a baby boy at first, they would buy a house uptown and then have as many babies as they liked, they would go on vacation every year, but Alex saved Venice for their honeymoon.

None of their day dreams featured the complications of reality, so naive they were.

They never proposed to each other, they did not need to. They were so obviously in love, there was an unspoken understanding that they would spend their lives together. It was impossible for them to think of anything even a slight bit different. To each other, they were engaged for eternity, an engagement beyond the idea of binding each other with golden bands. To their closest friends, they were two bodies one soul. To John’s family, they were flat mates.

Henry and Eleanor Laurens visited them a couple of times. Photos of John’s parents, siblings hung on the wall of the spare bedroom, and the framed photos of John and Alex together - kissing, hugging, pressing their foreheads against each others - were hidden at the back of the closet. Henry was awfully proud of his son.

Martha would call John at least once a week, would want to meet him, but John, with his quick wit sharpened by practise, would manage to dodge it as Alex kept staring at him with a blank expression from across the room.

John sometimes felt bad for the girl, felt guilty; then he looked at Alex, at how happy and in love he was, and he would forget.

John could not avoid Martha when he went to visit his family in South Carolina. She would take him out for coffee, for walk and hiking, and because of the presence of his father there, John could not refuse - all of which Alex would squeeze out of him at night over Skype. So John took Alex with him the next Christmas and kissed him under a tree by the lake John used to swim in when he was just a boy, away from his family and everyone else; the lake the lone holder of his secrets.

John showed Alex all his secret places, taught him how to ride a horse and painted a picture of him while he chased the turtles in the lake, his jeans pushed up to his knees but getting wet anyway, hair untied and wild, eyes so bright as he proudly showed John a tiny one that he had just got hold of - John captured all of that. John showed him the painting at night when everyone else went to bed and Alex pulled him into the bed. He silently slipped out of the guest room, kissing a drowsy Alex on the temple, just before dawn.

Christmas dinner was insufferable as John’s family showed great interest in Alex’s non-existent family. Between telling about his questionable birth, the man who gave him his last name abandoning them, his mother’s death and reputation, and a brother he lost all contact with, Alex’s voice grew heavy and he excused himself from the table. John followed him into the room to find him fighting back tears. Alex gently pressed his face against John’s chest. “I don’t enjoy demeaning myself like that.”

John, too, had seen their judgemental stares over the table. But he knew that the one thing this brilliant man was incapable of doing was to lie, unlike John. “I know.” he simply said, pulling him closer still.

John stole time to kiss Alex under the mistletoe later that night. “Merry Christmas,” he murmured.

 

On the following Sunday the whole family went to church, excluding the guest, Alex, because _of course_. He felt it would be awkward sitting for an hour listening to all those pretentious things, with the people he hardly knew, and in a foreign place, knowing that those people would despise him and the one he loved if they knew the truth. He spent the time reading a marine biology book which he found in John’s childhood book collection.

The Laurenses returned home about two hours later. Without giving his action a second thought, John went straight to the guest room and shut the door behind him. His face was ashen and he was staring into the middle distance, confirming Alex’s doubt that something was not right. Alex cradled his face and softly said, “hey?”

“Martha kissed me.” he looked at him and blurted out.

Alex took a double take. “And this was the first time?”

“Of course.”

There was silence for a while.

“And they said … they said right after the service that they have been planning for a party ... they wanted to surprise me. That’s when she kissed me.”

“What party?”

“Engagement party.”

“What-” Alex’s stomach fell.  “You have to tell them.”

“I have to tell them.” he said like a mantra, moisture gathering in his eyes. “It’s this Friday. This can’t happen. No, I love you. This can’t happen.”

 

Alex cut his holiday short and left on Tuesday kissing his John goodbye. “I love you. Tell them.”

To the family’s inquiry about why he would miss his “best friend’s” engagement party, John conjured up a lie about the workload. Both of them had decided that it was better for Alex to be absent at the scene. Alex had offered to stay at first, hold his hand through it, but John insisted on not embarrassing Alex again. “I can’t let you go through it, I won’t be able to bear it. It will be easier if I’m alone.”

“See you Saturday.”

 

 _Saturday,_ Alex thought as his flight took off, Saturday was when John had planned to be back, although he was not sure if his father would let him stay for that long after discovering the truth. Worst case scenario - John would be back the day he tells his parents; good for Alex. But Saturday was the day Alex was sure about. On Saturday he would get John as his own, his John not engaged to anyone, his John with a conservative family who knew he was in love with another man, his John free and out of the closet, his John he could kiss sitting on the bench of the park, on the train, his John who would not have to spend time talking to some southern girl, his own John and no one else’s.

But Saturday felt like years away. Alex could not really concentrate on anything. He was nervous, afraid and excited; this mixture of emotions left his stomach in a knot and he tried calling John every few hours to get some sort of relief. Most of the time John would hang up saying, “can’t talk right now.” Of course, he was surrounded by his family 24/7. So Alex waited as patiently as he could, trying to distract and busy himself with work. And Saturday came. Alex did not sleep a bit the previous night. He spent a while staring at the framed picture of John on the bedside table, clutching John’s pillow and digging his nose in it, imagining what their life would be like now. By five in afternoon he had prepared a three-course meal, put a nice bottle of wine on the table and lit some jasmine scented candles. He had, for once, cleaned up the whole apartment - something John had always complained about. He was waiting on the sofa in his best pair of jeans and the sky blue shirt that John liked on him, when John entered the apartment. Alex half ran to the kitchen after him.

John’s eyes were blank and bloodshot. Alex took both of his hands and said excitedly, “well?”

John looked into his eyes. Alex did not believe it, instinctively ignored the signs, so he asked again, a little out of breath, his eyes wide. “Well? John?”

John tightly closed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. Alex’s frantic fingers found the golden band on John’s ring finger. “No, but … John …”

“I couldn’t … I couldn’t tell them.”

“This can’t … But you are mine!”

John shook his head again. “I can’t disappoint them. I couldn’t. I tried.”

It was when John’s tears escaped was when Alex realized that he had been crying himself. “So you would give _me_ up?”

“Alex, my mom has heart disease. She will die. She won’t be able to bear it.”

Alex frantically touched John’s face, chest, hand, and searched his eyes for answers, anything to make sense of this insanity, because this could not happen, this was how they planned it. “But John … this- no.”

John cradled his face. “I love you so much.” He kissed his sweaty forehead. “I’ll never love again. I’m sorry.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are appreciated :)


End file.
